It’s possibly a naïve point of view, bearing in mind recent cut-backs in the GCC, but it seems that there might still be some hiring opportunities within international banks in the region sometime soon.

OK, so Jefferies closed its Dubai office, and the likes of Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have announced redundancies within their Gulf teams, but there are signs that international banks are still eying Middle Eastern expansions.

For instance, Citigroup, which recently unveiled plans to cut 52,000 staff and break up the organisation, has said that it will keep all Gulf-based employees.

In fact, Mohammad Al Shroogi, Citi’s managing director in the Middle East, says: “We continue to expand our services in this region and are encouraged by the opportunities in the UAE as well as the rest of the Middle East.”

Credit Suisse has also just appointed Anthony Armstrong as its new head of M&A in Dubai (though this was via the ever-more-common internal transfer). Nomura has also indicated it’s going to build up its Saudi team, and Deutsche Bank has beefed up its equity trading division as well its research capabilities in recent months.

Alex Cormack, director, head of Middle East at executive search firm Sheffield Haworth, says that the heady days of mass-scale hiring within international firms have obviously gone, but opportunities remain.

“Growth areas for international investment banks include research, equities and sales and trading,” he says. “What’s more, while some banks have restructured their teams, I believe there will be some new entrants to the Middle East in the coming months, and most banks are currently looking to expand their Saudi operations.”

Josephine Collins, a consultant focusing on investment banking and asset management at Sterling Executive Search, says she expects the trend of transferring people internally within international firms to make up the mainstay of recruitment this year.

“The amount of recruitment at a domestic level is unlikely to amount to anything significant, she says. “However, opportunities for external hiring exist in Saudi Arabia, where there’s a demand for local expertise that bulge bracket banks will find hard to source within their own organisations”